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Institute for Studies In American Music |
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Inside
This Issue: Inside This Issue “White Woman” as Jazz
Collector in the Film New Orleans (1947)
by Sherrie Tucker Katrina and the New Jazz Orthodoxy by Salim Washington Dusty Springfield and the Motown Invasion by Annie J. Randall Review: Searching for Robert Johnson by Nathan W. Pearson Review: From Paris to Peoria by Nancy Newman |
Review: From Paris to Peoria by Nancy Newman
“The
Celebrated Racer, De Meyer, (The property of G.C. Reitheimer, Esq.) winning
the Great Fall Sweepstakes of 1846” (Yankee Doodle, October
1846) Courtesy of the Literature Department,
The Free Library of Philadelphia The
appearance of R. Allen Lott’s From Paris to Peoria: How European
Piano Virtuosos Brought Classical Music to the American Heartland (Oxford
University Press, 2003; $55) bears a certain resemblance to the subject matter
it treats: like the arrival of the nineteenth-century European virtuosi on
these shores, this book has been eagerly awaited and much anticipated. Having been tantalized by brief glimpses
and advance reports, this reviewer is happy to attest that the wait has been
worthwhile. From Paris to Peoria
offers the reader a vivid portrait of a singular aspect of concert life in
the United States, the solo recitals of five notable pianists during the
years 1845-1876: Leopold De Meyer, Henri Herz, Sigismund Thalberg, Anton
Rubinstein, and Hans von Bülow, performer–composers who exerted
tremendous influence on America’s musical life but whose concert tours
have never before been systematically examined. The scholarly consideration of traveling virtuosi is the book’s
great innovation. Just as nineteenth-century Americans had to wait for celebrated
European performers to make the arduous trip across the Atlantic, we of the
twenty-first century have had to wait for the emergence of an intellectual
climate that would support the serious treatment of such a topic. Just twenty-five years ago, for example, H.
Earle Johnson could pay a back-handed compliment to the New York Philharmonic
and Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society by comparing their
accomplishments to those of visiting musicians. The “feeble bodies” of such
mid-nineteenth century American ensembles had “accomplished more for
music than touring virtuosi (De Meyer, Herz, Gottschalk, Ole Bull, Remenyi, and
Thalberg) who, confounding audiences with their individualisms and their
techniques, implanted low standards by means of galops, waltzes, themes and
variations, and nauseous potpourris.”1 Similar attitudes have long found support
in Liszt’s renunciation of the recital circuit and Schumann’s
condemnations of exhibitionistic performers.
Yet to accept the received wisdom on this topic is to ignore both the
re-evaluation of the role of performers in shaping music history, as seen in
Richard Crawford’s America’s Musical Life, and the
nineteenth-century mingling of popular and serious genres explored in
Lawrence Levine’s Highbrow/Lowbrow. Further evidence for the changed climate is found in the
rehabilitated reputations of two of Johnson’s targets, Gottschalk and Ole Bull.
Three others—Herz, De Meyer, and Thalberg—are the subjects
of Lott’s research, and his analyses promise to do the same for these
figures. These three were the subject
of Lott’s dissertation, and he has extended this study to include the
more prominent Rubinstein and von Bülow.
By bringing these five pianists together in a single volume,
addressing their similarities as well as their differences, Lott enables us
to look at the question of the virtuosi’s impact and accomplishments in
an entirely new light. What he has
found is a “listening continuum” spanning thirty years, a time in
which “most Americans believed the visiting virtuosos were a beneficent
phenomenon, awakening musical interest among a wide range of audiences and
providing excellent models for students and aspiring professional musicians”
(p. 292). Indeed, Lott observes that
our own age is still beholden to the virtuoso. The difference is that while the
mid-nineteenth-century virtuoso played his or her own, individualized compositions,
the late nineteenth and twentieth-century
virtuosi performed their own, individualized
“interpretations” (p. 290).
Such insights coax us toward a
more sophisticated understanding of the function of spectacle in the pursuit of aesthetic pleasures. Lott has derived a satisfying scheme
for the presentation of an abundance of information. The book is organized into five roughly equal parts, each one focused on a
virtuoso and arranged in chronological order of his concert tour of the
United States. Each part is comprised
of several chapters, providing relevant biographical information, an
evaluation of the career point at which an American tour was undertaken, a
description of the tour and its highlights, analyses of repertory, and the
introduction of “assisting artists.” In addition to providing a wealth of
material on five renowned pianists, From Paris to Peoria is an
important source of information on a number of notable violinists, including
Henry Vieuxtemps, Joseph Burke, George Knoop, Henryk Wienawski and Camillo
Sivori (Paganini’s “only pupil” [p. 76]). Lott’s discussion of the prominent
role played by violinists in eliciting audience appreciation for fabulous
technique, fertile invention, and unique interpretation, suggests that a
comparable project treating transatlantic violin virtuosi such as Eduard
Remenyi and Miska Hauser awaits further research. The book’s structure resembles a mid-century
concert or theater program in its pacing, with the presentation of the main
parts—each containing lively writing and highly varied topics—linked
by two brief interludes. The latter address nineteenth-century views on
issues such as the educational value of virtuoso performance, female
pianists, and the changing function of the piano itself. In addition, insets are used as
“sweetmeats” throughout the book to treat special topics, such as
“Liszt and America,” “The Bleeding of Sivori” (by the
press), and “Rubinstein’s Contract.” Everything is framed by an introductory
“prelude” and concluding “postlude.” Finally, two appendices coordinate much
data. The first gives the itineraries
(dates and cities) of each pianist’s tour; the second, the repertoire
performed by Rubinstein and Bülow in the United States. From Paris to Peoria is also richly peppered with
illustrations, including portraits of each pianist, maps displaying their
concert destinations, caricatures, cartoons, program broadsides, sheet music
covers, and musical examples. Special
mention should be made of the brief but insightful musical analyses featured
in several sections. From De
Meyer’s “exotic” La danse du sérail, op. 51, to
Herz’s crowd–pleaser, The Last Rose of Summer, op. 159, to
Thalberg’s opera fantasias, Lott has found a context in which to
address “the music itself” so that such an endeavor is meaningful
rather than positivistic. Audio
examples are available through a supporting website (www.rallenlott.info), as
are several full scores and an abundance of additional material. The website seems both scholarly and
promotional in design, and sections such as “Satire”—a compendium
of lengthy articles “that spoof virtuoso pianists, traveling artists in
general, the people who managed them, and the people who heard
them”—promise to serve both purposes. A small peculiarity of the book is that the index
includes neither Paris nor Peoria, although both places are mentioned in the
text and many other towns have index entries.
The omission of Paris seems particularly unfortunate, as a more
extensive consideration of the transatlantic ramifications of the traveling
virtuosi’s activities would be welcome.
But not to worry: we who study nineteenth-century American musical
life know that the greatest rewards are worth the wait. —Nancy Newman University at Albany Note 1 H. Earle Johnson, First
Performances in America to 1900: Works with Orchestra. Bibliographies in American Music 4
(Detroit: College Music Society, 1979),
xiv. ISAM home Who we
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